


Aeternum

by trufflemores



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: 5.09, AU, Angst, Elseworlds, F/M, Friendship, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Romance, Whump, reaction fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-18
Updated: 2018-12-18
Packaged: 2019-09-21 13:51:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,178
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17044928
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/trufflemores/pseuds/trufflemores
Summary: 5.09/7.09/3.09 Elseworlds reaction fic.What if Ralph's knockout punch didn't land?  (AKA the Westallen-centric Elseworlds fic you've all been waiting for.)





	Aeternum

**Author's Note:**

> ...with a little bit of Barriscowest, just because I heckin' adore that ship. Can be read as QueenWestAllen, too. I'm a multishipper, I have many feelings about the relationships and permutations of said relationships between these characters.
> 
> I sincerely hope you'll enjoy.
> 
> Aeternum is Latin for "forever, for ever, always, eternally, perpetually, also."

Ralph tries.

To his credit, he tries.

But Barry has faced down sharks in the water, monsters on sinking ships, and forms of magic so dire they were buried to keep them from ever resurfacing – as well as a legion of human enemies. Each possessed their own strengths ( _and weaknesses_ ), an innate flaw that he exploited and used to survive. Ralph is a man. And that makes him just another target with an innate, exploitable flaw.

In Ralph's case, he breathes a little louder than usual. Ralph probably doesn't notice. No one without extensive experience being stalked in the woods would notice something as careless as  _breathing_  amid the chaos of the scene. But Barry –  _my name is Oliver Queen_ – Allen,  _does_.

He has no way of knowing if Oliver is even alive, but he doesn't worry because he's ducking underneath Ralph's fist and throwing himself forward in almost the same movement, head-butting Ralph hard in the stomach. Ralph lets out a garbled sound as his back hits the steel wall, sliding down. Without much pity, Barry aims a well-timed knee to the face. Ralph goes limp.

He hears Iris say, "If you're trying to convince me you're not the Green Arrow, you're doing a poor job."

Heart pounding, alert and ready, Barry demands gravely, "Why are you doing this?"

"Bigger question," Cisco says, materializing from a breach, Killer Frost at his side, "why are you here, Oliver?"

Back to the wall, Barry edges away from them, never once looking away. He feels antsy having Iris nearby and emphatically not on his team, but he knows she's the least likely to kill him with one blow. "You have to believe me," he says in a low voice, equidistant between them, aching for Oliver at his side. With a speedster, he'd stand a chance against two metas. Without –

_You're on your own, Oliver._

Shaking his head faintly, trying to erase the traitorous voice from existence, he hits the floor hard as an icicle sinks into the steel behind him. " _What_ is your problem?" he snaps, suddenly pissed off. Launching himself, he moves at a partial crouch, loping across the room and almost tackling Iris to the balcony, dragging the door closed behind them in the same motion.

It makes him sick to his stomach to do it, but he holds her in front of him to keep the others at bay, pleading, "Call them off. I can prove I'm Barry."

"Let go of me." There's no fear in her voice - and no sympathy either.

"Iris," he implores. "It's me. It's  _Barry_. I know you think this reality is all that ever was and that I'm Oliver Queen—"  _you are_.

Tilting his head, trying to physically get away from the voice, he grits his teeth. Frantic, he insists, "Tony, you remember Tony? You named me – you  _named me_ The Flash after we beat him. You wrote it on your blog."

"You're lying." Her voice is soft but damning. He feels Iris shift in his arms, barely noticeable, but he doesn't look away from her eyes,  _needing_ her to understand, to hear him.

"C'mon, this reality can't be –" He makes a soft sound, a mixture of surprise and pain, as he feels something sharp stab his thigh.

His vision goes blurry, but he holds onto her, insisting, "Iris … Iris, please …" He feels sick to his stomach, hands shaking. "Don't … don't do this, you know it's me…"

"I'm sorry, Oliver," she says, and it hurts, a lot more than he expects it to.

Collapsing, Barry watches her through blurry, barely open eyes as the others converge. Cisco wrenches open the door with a freneticism bordering on panic, asking urgently – a world away to Barry; he wishes he could tune the signal better but his ears aren't  _working_ – "You okay?"

"I'm fine," Iris says softly. "We need to get them to the pipeline. The nanites won't last long."

Barry hears Cisco make a noise of agreement that borders on disgust as he agrees, "I'm beginning to hate those cells." Then he crouches, clamps a hand on Oliver's shirt, and hauls him through a breach with ease. In the split second that he is gone, Barry hears Ralph groan and Killer Frost idle over to him. Barry judges that he himself must look even more ragdoll than he feels for them to ignore him so totally.

Still, he has to try. Consciousness is burning out of him, but there's still  _time_.

One last bid.

"Iris," he slurs, "Speed Force … do you … do you remember what you said? 'Come home to me.'"

He hears her pause, an audible intake of breath, and then she kneels in front of him. Not close enough to reach out – not that his limp fingers would cooperate – but near. Killer Frost warns dryly, "I wouldn't get too close. That's when they bite."

"What did you say?" Iris asks softly, ignoring her and staring at him.

Breathing is hard. Speaking is almost impossible. "Speed Force," Barry insists, as loudly and clearly as he can. "You said … 'Come home to me, Barry.'" He pants, wishing more than ever that he could shake the sedative from his very skin. Fighting it is giving him a pounding headache; drugs that barely touched him before wrestle furiously with his consciousness. But he has Iris' attention, and that's all he needs.

She frowns, her features soft and fuzzy. Tentatively, she asks, "… Barry?"

He exhales, relieved, and says, "It's me. I  _promise_  it's me."

Cisco returns, stepping forward and startling. "Iris—"

"I think we made a mistake," Iris cuts in, her voice firm and troubled at the same time.

Cisco questions warily, "What'd he say to you? You know Oliver's a good liar—"

It hurts to hear Cisco stand against him, more than he can express, but Barry doesn't have to listen long.

Without a sound, he loses his failing grip on reality and slips over the edge.

* * *

Barry wakes up not in a cell but cuffed to a chair in the Cortex.

He gives a furtive tug at the link, making a frustrated sound – naturally, they thought of every contingency for their metahuman wrangling escapades; Houdini himself couldn't escape these unaided – before opening his eyes. Four people stand across from him. He doesn't ask where Ralph is, taking in Iris, Cisco, Killer Frost, and Sherloque, in that order.

Breaking the silence, Sherloque observes dryly, "For the most notorious mass murderer in Star City, he's not what I would have expected."

"That's because I'm  _not_ ," Barry has to pause to close his eyes against a wave of dizziness before finishing, "a murderer. And I'm not Oliver Queen, either."

"Ah. So he is delusional," Sherloque says, nodding in satisfaction. "Well then, don't you have a, uh, garbage disposal? Let us be rid of this murderer."

Cisco turns fully to face Sherloque, pure astonishment on his face. "Exactly what Earth are you from?"

"What?" Sherloque brushes invisible dust from his shoulder, dismissive and unconcerned. "It's much easier than putting criminals in the ground. The ground is scarce. Better to dispose and recycle the quantum energy into more productive things. Do you not do that?" he asks incredulously.

Cisco holds up a hand, looking ready to argue, before lowering it and shaking his head. "You should be grateful I'm more inclined to follow Iris' lead than his," he adds peevishly at Barry. "At the very best I think you're Oliver Queen. You gonna convince me otherwise?"

Barry lets his gaze slide to Iris, entreating her to intervene. She sits quietly in a chair, observing him, a frown etched on her features. He knows the tribunal isn't necessary – if  _Iris_ believes him, the team will surely follow – but he also knows that uprisings begin with hard-fisted leaders who won't justify their apparently absurd decisions to the group that follows them.

 _Justify yourself_ , her gaze challenges, not without sympathy.

He draws in a deep breath. "What do you want to know?" he asks Cisco, drawing on his own patience. Needing it. His head aches, but he can't indulge, not now.

"Who you are, why you're here, and why I'm supposed to believe you're not the most notorious vigilante Star City's ever known," Cisco replies.

Barry nods, pushing himself as upright as he can be, no longer leaning against the chair but braced against it. He can almost feel the spotlight of a police overhead light as he looks at the three standing judges across from him. The only one who he needs to persuade is seated, already signed. It's the others he must win over, now.

"My name is Barry Jonas Queen." He blinks, surprised at how readily the words come out, before shaking his head slowly, trying to dispel the lie from his mind. "I … I'm Barry," he repeats. "Your Barry. Barry Allen. Barry … Barry Allen."

_My middle name. What's my middle name? I was named after my father._

"Robert" doesn't sound right, even in his own head, but it's the only one he knows when he thinks  _father_.

"I … I'm here because Oliver is, and we're trying to figure this thing out, and we  _need_  help."

"Team Arrow would be more fitting," Cisco cuts in, voice stiff, unconvinced.

Barry looks right at him, unblinking. "Dante," he rasps, mouth dry. "Your brother. You delivered pizzas one summer to raise money to pay off his bookie." He doesn't say  _you were fifteen_. He's afraid – terribly afraid – that everything he thinks he knows about this reality is underpinned with modifications that will slay all of his truths where they stand.

Cisco pales a shade, taking a step back. "I never told anyone that," he says, suddenly folding his arms across his chest defensively.

Barry's heart aches.  _Flashpoint_ , he thinks, trying to reorganize it all in his head, but none of it fits. None of it fits.

_Am I going crazy?_

He can see his own life playing out exactly the way it's supposed to – partying and enjoying his early twenties, being a nuisance to public officials and his father's corporate allies alike, sailing off on the  _Orion_ on a business trip with his father to the North China Sea, father-bonding time,  _we never got to bond much, Dad was always away_  –

"Earth to Arrow," Killer Frost cuts in dryly. "Your story has holes."

"I know." Barry looks right at her, needing them all to see underneath the façade, underneath the  _lie_. The truth is his only option, no matter how mangled. "Guys, I … I don't know what to tell you. We never planned for this sort of thing happening," he admits, a little hint of laughter at the edge of his voice. It's bitter. He doesn't give it voice. "You'd think after Hunter and Savitar we'd have contingencies—"

"This is the contingency," Iris interrupts quietly. "Barry knows the code." She nods at the screen, and Barry sees Oliver on the floor of a cell. "He didn't. And neither do you." There's wariness in her tone, but it's undercut by genuine understanding. "I guess we can't plan for  _every_ event."

"Reality was rewritten," Barry tells her,  _implores_ her. "Reality was rewritten, and now I'm – I've  _always_ been Oliver Queen here, and my life … my life isn't what I think it should be." He remembers Henry shooting himself in the chest, the life raft washing ashore with just one occupant, the  _in absentia_ funeral, the arrow punching through his shoulder— "If it keeps up, I … I honestly don't know if I'm going to remember I was ever someone else."

"That's a bad thing?" Cisco challenges, not menacingly, but with honest curiosity.

Barry looks at him, gaze softening. "If it means I lose you?" He lets his gaze drift across the panel and lands on Iris. "If I lose everything?" He swallows hard. "That's … worse than death to me. You are my world, no matter how much I want to tell you why I  _am_ the man you think I am. I'm a vigilante. I've killed people. I can feel it. I know it's true.

"But you've gotta believe me when I say this time yesterday,  _reality was different_. And it is changing and unless we figure out how and why, I'm gonna lose everything. And maybe that won't be a loss to you," he admits, shrugging painfully. As far as they're concerned, Oliver  _is_ their Barry – and losing the supposed affection of Star City's vigilante hardly puts urgency into their expressions. "But it's a loss to  _me_ , and I can't … I can't accept that."

A long pause ensues. At last, Cisco says quietly, "You still haven't answered my third question."

Barry can't help it; he smiles. "How would you answer it, Cisco? I sound crazy.  _I sound crazy_. I can't even remember my own name, but I swear to you that I am the man I say I am. I am The Flash. I'm not Oliver Queen. I never have been."

Silence, thick enough to cut.

"I believe you."

Iris says it softly but firmly, and the others don't look at her, but Cisco's shoulders visibly sink with relief, and even Killer Frost seems to relax. Sherloque stirs a cup of tea nonchalantly, wandering out of the room with a silent wave of his hand. Killer Frost cocks her head at Barry before letting her gaze settle on the screen where Oliver is stirring. "Okay," she says, and then, almost humorously, " _Barry_. What now?"

It seems to make it real for Cisco, who promptly crosses the room and flicks a tiny mechanism on the cuffs, releasing them. He hesitates, still crouched, and Barry does the only thing he can think to do, wrapping his arms around Cisco and squeezing carefully. It's not a soft hug, but Cisco clings to it, exhaling against his shoulder, genuine relief in his voice. "This is so fucking weird," he tells Barry's shoulder, like he's afraid to give his unease to the others.

"I know," Barry admits, letting him go and pushing himself carefully to his feet. Cisco helps him, steadies him, and when he looks at the monitor Cisco's gaze follows it.

"Him, too?" he asks, an abbreviated question.  _Can we really trust him?_

Barry nods. " _That's_ Oliver Queen," he says simply. "You should probably let him out."

* * *

"Okay. Now that we've all had a proper introduction, how do we solve the real problem?" Oliver roots around the Cortex impatiently. Almost reflexively, Barry walks over to a cabinet, opens it, and tosses him a bag of pretzels. Oliver levels the flattest look humankind has ever invented at him, deadpanning, "Do I look like a pretzels kind of guy to you?"

Barry sighs and holds up his hands defensively, a headache still lurking in the corners of his head. "Just eat 'em."

Moodily, Oliver tears open the bag, retrieves a single pretzel stick, and bites down. It crunches loudly. In a Flash, the bag is empty; he crumples it and stuffs it into a nearby waste bin. "Now that we've had a proper introduction," he repeats, sounding less likely to stab the next person to speak to him, "how do we fix it?"

"Well." Iris looks between them, eventually letting her gaze rest on Barry. "Oli—Barry. What do you have in mind?"

Warmed at the thought of being prioritized –  _I'm Barry, I'm Barry, I promise you I'm Barry_ – he says aloud, "Honestly, somebody with the power to rewrite reality is … not somebody I'd like to cross swords with. Not without some backup."

"You can always count on us," Cisco says, gesturing at himself and Killer Frost.

Killer Frost rolls her eyes. "He's talking about his  _real_ hero friends," she says snidely. "Isn't that right,  _Barry_?"

Frowning – backpedaling gently – Barry clarifies, "I just meant … Ollie and I—"

"You lose a few marbles, there, Arrow?" a voice cuts in sulkily. Barry turns and catches the fist Ralph lobs at his head, forcing him back a step with ease. "Why're we consorting with criminals?" Ralph asks the others, still squinty-eyed with pain as he shakes his fist off, stepping deliberately out of Barry's reach and retrieving another bag of pretzels.

"Apparently there's been a … development," Iris steps in, sauntering over to Barry and looking up at him. His heart aches. "This is Barry," she says.

Ralph chokes on a pretzel, thumping his chest with a fist. "He didn't hit you in the head, did he?" he says, sounding concerned.

"No," Iris says, still looking at Barry. "Something big happened. Reality changed. This is Barry."

"Well. Barry." Ralph bows, eyes still streaming. "It's nice to meet you again. So tell me why you're the Green Arrow now? Is this a midlife crisis?"

"Nothing would make me happier than to explain the intricacies of this situation to you in excruciating detail," Barry says, watching in amusement as a flash of yellow light slips by, Ralph's hands coming up empty as Oliver returns innocently to his corner. Another pretzel bag sits emptily in the trash. "But the longer we stay like this, the more damage we're taking."

"Damage?" Oliver repeats. "What do you mean?"

"What's your middle name?"

Oliver frowns at him. He opens his mouth to reply, shuts it, and then frowns more deeply. "All right," he says slowly, "it's  _not_ Henry."

"And mine's not Robert," Barry adds, feeling a mixture of relief and despair at the realization.  _Henry. Barry Henry Queen. Allen. Barry Henry Allen_. Almost desperately, he finishes, "But if we don't fix things soon, there's a better-than-likely chance we'll forget who we were and assimilate into the new reality."

"And you know this because—"

Barry cuts in shortly, "I have a source." The edge to his voice prevents further questioning. Steering them away from the topic – the last thing he wants is to become emotional about  _Eobard Thawne_ and Flashpoint – he adds, "A mutual friend of ours lives on another Earth. She could be helpful.  _With_ you," he insists firmly, looking at Killer Frost and Cisco. "I'm not looking to replace any of you," he finishes, looking right at Iris.

She nods once, sparing a glance for Oliver, who gazes back at her stoically. It almost breaks Barry's heart to see Iris' reaction, but he lets her process it without intervening, allowing her to slowly direct her gaze back to him, trying to force the idea over reality. He holds out a hand to her, and she hesitates before taking it, carefully, fingertips grazing his.

There is no spark.

Barry's heart cracks.

 _I can't lose you. I can't. I can't_.

She seems on the verge of tears, but instead of retreating she just reaches out, twining a hand in his shirt, tugging gently until he wraps his arms around her. He holds her, closing his eyes as he rests his chin on top of her head, aware that everything about him breathes  _liar_. There is no Speed aura, nothing remotely lightning-like about the energy between them. His heart canters along at an ordinary human gait. His eyes do not flash gold when he opens them and lets her step back.

She doesn't let go of him completely, sliding her hand to hold his, needing a point of contact between them. Barry is grateful. He feels like he might drift off, himself – not into unconsciousness, but into unreality.  _I don't want to disappear._

Iris holds onto him, anchoring him, trusting him when she has no reason to, and he knows above all else that it will be  _okay_  as long as she is still there.

* * *

 _Aftermath_.

It's an ordeal.

Fighting AMAZO – Deegan – the Monitor – it's important, but at the end of the day they rest in oblivion, confined to memory, denied a life beyond the struggle. Barry has gotten very good at confining nightmares to the last two hours of rest and letting the next twenty-two overwrite them. He is good at burying pain.

When Deegan rewrites reality again, Barry wants to cry out in frustration.  _Stop taking this from me_.

But he took it from himself, long before Deegan ever arrived. It is that guilt, from all the lifetimes and universes he has shattered,  _that guilt_  haunts him, makes him wonder if his life isn't irretrievable, if he isn't as empty and ethereal as the ghosts that accompany him. If he even has a  _true_ story anymore, or if he's doomed to simply live in the footnotes.

 _Maybe Barry Allen died the day the tsunami struck the city_ , he thinks, before burying that thought, too, just like the others.

The first thing he does is stop Deegan from hurting anyone else, including his family.

The second thing he does is find Iris.

On the run to their apartment, he wonders what heartbreak he would have found had he not been so absorbed in the fight to even pause for breath and ask where she was in the strange new reality he found himself in. If it was disconcerting to find himself in Oliver's body lacking Speed, it was even worse to find himself as a completely ordinary man, no powers or super-training to speak of, alongside an equally ordinary man. They knew the world and their enemies too well, and they were desperately, hopelessly outmatched.

Somehow, they came out on top. As Barry skates to a halt outside the door, he hesitates, half-wondering if what he finds will be another tragedy.

It's tempting to walk away, to live in a happy little bubble that lies to him and says she still knows him and loves him, why wouldn't she? It would be easy to take time off, to let the world turn on its own for a while and focus on finding peace with himself.

 _I don't think I can find peace alone_.

He knocks, once, twice. He waits, rocking back on his heels a little. Lightning lives under his skin, but he still finds himself wondering, worrying that she will not recognize him.  _You saw me before the lightning_ , he tells himself, as he hears footsteps approach.

He stands rock-steady as Iris opens the door, looking at him with the reserved kind of patience normally allotted to finding him up at three in the morning, restless and sleepless. "Barry?" she asks, and he staggers forward a step, trembling with relief, wrapping her up in his arms carefully.

"Hey," she hushes softly, holding onto him and stepping back, letting the door close behind them. "It's okay. I'm here."

It's early afternoon, too early for this midnight grief to attend them, this grief that is so tired it  _hurts_  to claw its way from the earth, but he holds onto her gently and shakes with it, unable to bear the thought that he could have  _lost this_.

"It's okay," she repeats, a hand sliding up to the back of his neck, low with his forehead over her shoulder. She squeezes lightly. "Honey, what's wrong?"

He draws in a shuddering breath, trying to formulate his thoughts into words, to explain anything that has happened in the last twenty-four hours, and swallows hard. "I feel sick," he admits thickly.

She scruffs his neck one last time before pulling back and looking worriedly at his face. "I thought you couldn't …" Her voice trails off as she takes in the agony written plainly on his face, deeper than physical pain and far less eradicable. "How can I help?" she asks, rubbing a hand across his arm, never letting go completely.

He looks at the ceiling, struggling with every fiber of his being to hold onto his composure. "Don't leave," he says, hating how pathetic it sounds, worse when a tear slips down his face. "Please don't leave me. I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, I'm sorry for – for everything, for Flashpoint, for  _Eddie_ , for everything, Iris—"

"Hey," she repeats, much softer, reaching up to cup his face in her hands. He closes his eyes, and tears slip past them. "Barry, I love you." She swipes away a tear with her thumb. He reaches up and holds onto her wrists gently. "I love you and the everything we have. Okay?" He hiccups. Making a soft, affectionate sound, an echo of  _honey_ , she holds him tight as another sob hiccups silently in his chest. He buries his forehead in her shoulder, the safest place in the multiverse, and aches for what they have and what they stand to lose.

Some pain refuses to be buried, but Iris doesn't let him drown in it, holding on, barely understanding his grief, let alone the  _magnitude_ , and still loving him, deeply, endlessly.

* * *

Three AM finds Barry dozing, staring at the ceiling. His chest rises falls with each steady, even breath. Iris has her head pillowed on his shoulder, sound asleep, one hand flat on his stomach. Warm, faint Speed purrs resonate in the space between them. He breathes in and feels comforted by her weight, her relaxed presence. The trust between them.

 _I'll always come home to you_ , he thinks, kissing her temple lightly, closing his eyes.

Cuddling her close, he drifts off, her and their everything safely tucked in his arms.


End file.
